Today, the Supreme Court upheld Hobby Lobby’s alleged ‘Right’ to eliminate the civil Rights of their employees based on trumped-up religious grounds.
The decision was 5-4. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion on this enormous expansion of corporate rights. This new-found right applies to 'closely-held' corporations, which are corporations that are not publicly traded on open markets. Hobby Lobby, yes, General Motors, no.
The question is: How many of these corporations will now declare themselves a 'religious entity'?
And, I say 'trumped up' because of the overt hypocrisy over the fact that Hobby Lobby's 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. So, it's against our Hobby Lobby corporate religious beliefs unless, of course, we can make some ca$h from it!Does this now mean that your employer will soon be able to completely eliminate ‘pre & post-natal’ services for their unmarried female employees?
Perhaps they will also now have the right to fire any of their employees who refuse to sacrifice a lamb at the alter of the Hobby Lobby’s in-house chapel?!?
Sorry, but MY bible says: "NO blood transfusions or vaccinations for... YOU!!"
So, now that SCOTUS has ruled that a 'closely-held' corporation can, in Myth Romney’s words: “Be a Person, Too”, I would think that it's time to make the top management of some of these corporations responsible to stand up to criminal trials for the crimes of their corporations!
To make this ruling possible, SCOTUS had to conclude that these corporations have the same rights to religious freedom as real live, walking/sleeping/eating/breathing/sneezing, human beings, which the Supreme Court has never concluded before IN THE HISTORY OF UNITED STATES JURISPRUDENCE!
Also, this ruling by SCOTUS has single-handedly unwound centuries of settled corporate law practice.
Further, with this ruling, the Court has also extended unprecedented protections to secular employers, which will certainly open up a tsunami of new religious freedom challenges to virtually every other law we have on the books.
I'm sorry, Mr. Constitution, but I, as a religious corporation, have a deep religious objection to paying my women employees as much as I pay the men, and, oh yeah, you can certainly understand how servicing gay customers violates my sacred religious principles!
The possibilities are ENDLESS!!
But since this ruling shreds the corporate 'veil' that separates the 'closely-held' corporation from it's shareholders, thereby affording them less protection, perhaps this will consequently open up our Right, as individuals, to sue a corporation’s shareholders for the misbehavior of their corporations. I can’t wait to see how THIS one plays out!
This is a very sad moment for America. Imagine that the day has come when Americans can expect to be treated this poorly just because they happen to work at an 'Arts & Crafts' store!
Bottom Line: We have officially turned into a SCOTUS sanctioned corporate ‘oligarchy’ today… but us Daily Kos readers have known that for quite a while now.
Emily Bazelon of Slate summed this all up with one sentence: "The conservative Justices on SCOTUS have figured out how to 'weaponize' the 1st Amendment."
(That ‘whirring’ sound you hear is our Founding Fathers spinning in their graves today!)